Your essential housing guide: Pennsylvania edition

Depending on whether you’re at the top or the bottom of Pennsylvania, this area can be the closest you can get to living on campus without being in halls.

This grants residents the luxury of being able to roll out of bed fifteen minutes before a lecture and, depending on whether or not you mind skipping a shower, you have a fairly good chance of dragging your sleepy self there on time.

The shortcut to campus

Pennsylvania Road itself is mostly students, with there often being loud pre-drinks and house parties that rarely, if ever, get shut down.

The streets leading off of the main road are also largely students with the odd family dotted about. The Powderham Crescent Residents Association will always be on hand to make sure you’re having just the right amount of fun – but if you play music at the wrong time, they will call estate patrol/the pigs and fuck you senseless. So shhhh.

The area is the route taken by freshers living in Exeter halls, Lafrowda, Rowe House etc, to get to and from town on a night out; consequently it isn’t unusual to hear their drunken chat as they stumble home at 3am, and there are often more than a few long-forgotten cheesy chips boxes to navigate after particularly heavy nights.

In terms of pubs, The Vic is only up the road and to the right, so you’re nice and close for when your friends inevitably arrange to meet there for a drink, and five minutes down the road is The Black Horse, an underrated favourite among students.

Down this straight road you can get to the high street in 5-10 minutes at a leisurely pace, although the closest supermarket within walking distance is the smaller Sainsbury’s on Sidwell that isn’t as well-stocked as others, and unfortunately they are quite far to walk.

This obstacle tempts many Pennsylvania residents to stop in at the Co-op down the middle of the road at least three times a day, be it to buy booze for pre-drinks, those addictive 2-for-£4 ready meals, or some chewing gum to get cashback for a night out.

While extremely handy, there is the guarantee of seeing absolutely everyone you know in the shop, which can be a distressing experience when you’re unsociably hungover and just want to buy a large pizza and paracetamol in peace.

the dream

For the larger houses on Pennsylvania Road, you might be looking at slightly higher rent prices than areas further away from campus, although the marginally smaller houses on the off-roads offer rent options as low as £90 p/w.

Overall, if you don’t mind the occasional bit of noise, the requirement to look a little harder for cheap rent, but want to be a brisk walk from both campus and town and surrounded by students, Pennsylvania is the perfect place to live next year.